


Ten Days

by Colubrina



Series: Dramione One Shots [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, captured!Hermione
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 15:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20585054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Hermione Granger is locked in his basement and Draco Malfoy doesn't know what to do.





	Ten Days

** ~ day 1 ~ **

That Hermione Granger was locked in his basement – in the _dungeons_ in his basement – was making Draco Malfoy sick. Everyone else had been rescued, but she had been left behind.

Casualty of war.

It made it more real, somehow, as if it needed to be made any realer than it already had been. She was his _classmate_. Not his friend, certainly. But she was just a girl, and his father had locked her away and was leaving her there to rot.

Or leaving her there until his aunt was bored.

He sat in his room, barricaded behind his door, with his head in his hands and cried.

** ~ day 2 ~ **

** **

He cornered a house-elf and gave it a carefully thought out order. It had taken him hours to get the wording right. Go heal the girl in the basement. Bring her food. Bring her blankets. Don’t let anyone see you. Don’t tell anyone.

It didn’t help that the house-elves hated Granger. It did it anyway, but he got a look.

Well, if anyone found out, he’d get a lot more than a look.

** ~ day 3 ~ **

He crept down early in the morning, after the Death Eater sots were all passed out and before his mother, early riser, was taking her tea. He stood, helplessly, and looked through the bars at the girl. She was asleep, huddled under the blankets the elf had brought. She looked dirty and thin and scared. Even asleep, she looked scared.

He pushed a book into her cage. 

He didn’t know what to do.

** ~ day 4 ~ **

When he crept down again, she was awake, waiting for him, sitting cross-legged in the very center of her cell. Her eyes were steady.

He waited for her to abuse him, to call him Death Eater filth, to call him the coward he knew he was.

All she said was, “Thank you for the book.”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“It’s not,” she said.

** ~ day 5 ~ **

“I brought you strawberries,” he said, pushing the bowl through the bars. He had to tip it sideways to get it to fit, and one of them fell out and rolled across the floor. She picked it up, brushed the dirt off, and ate it, watching him.

“Have they forgotten about me?” she asked. “I think the waiting is the worst part.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Could you get me another book?” 

** ~ day 6 ~ **

When he passed it through the bars, her fingers brushed his, and he made a grimace of distaste, a lifetime of prejudice in one thoughtless expression.

She saw it, and he watched her fold in on herself. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and she shrugged and turned away from him. 

“You are who you were raised to be,” was all she said.

** ~ day 7 ~ **

“I’m not,” he said. 

It was the first thing he said when he came down that morning. She was sitting, as usual, waiting for him. Or just waiting, he supposed. The elves had brought more blankets, more food; she didn’t seem as horribly thin. “I’m not just who I was raised to be.”

She looked at him. He wished she’d condemn him, judge him, abuse him. 

He wished she’d hate him because then he could hate her and leave her here and not think about how his family had locked his classmate in their dungeon.

Not think about how he lived in a house that had a dungeon. 

“Who are you then?” she asked. 

“I didn’t kill Dumbledore.” He said it defensively, angrily. 

“You let the Death Eaters in, though,” she said, and he flushed and turned to leave.

“Draco.” She said it when he’d taken just a few steps, and he stopped.

“What?” Angry. Hurt. Nothing, he thought, ever hurts as much as the truth.

“You’re keeping me alive. I know you’re… more. You’re just… you’re also you. It’s hard to trust. Harder to hope.”

He turned back, and she was at the bars, her hand reached through towards him. He stood there, frozen, and looked at it. Finally, he stepped back and laced his fingers through hers. They stood there, silently, until he could hear the creaking and rustling that meant people were starting to move around upstairs. 

** ~ day 8 ~ **

He passed her the strawberries one at a time so they wouldn’t fall on the ground. He could tell she was trying not to let their fingers touch, and he finally just grabbed her hand. “I said I was sorry,” he muttered.

“Can you get me out?” 

So much hope in that question. Trust, too.

“We can’t apparate from inside the Manor,” he said. “If I could get you past the wards… but I can’t even get you out of this room.”

She leaned against the bars, and he leaned against her, his forehead on hers. Thinking.

** ~ day 9 ~ **

He came running down the next day and tore around the corner. She wasn’t sitting, waiting for him. 

She was huddled against the back wall of her cell, shivering and shaking. 

“You’re hurt.” She was _hurt_. She’d trusted him, and he’d been planning to save her, and now she was _hurt_.

She turned to face him, and there was a cut down her cheek, crusted and red, her eye was blacked, and her lip was swollen. She stood, far too carefully, and took a few steps toward him and then stopped. He didn’t like the way she was holding her arm.

“Granger,” he said. “Hermione.”

“Do you have more strawberries?” she asked, her voice unnaturally steady. “I’m sure that will make everything better.”

“No,” he said, sounding lost. “No strawberries.”

“Oh.”

“Can you run?” he asked her, trying to focus himself. “Are you in good enough shape to run?”

She took another unsteady step. “Why? 

Does your aunt want to play chase the mudblood? Is it more fun if I can run away? Is it more fun to give me a little hope and then take it away?”

He didn’t wait any longer but pulled the key – the actual old fashioned key on an actual old-fashioned key ring – from his pocket and thrust it into the lock.

“How did you…”

“I drugged their wine.” His voice was short. He’d pictured how this would go, and it hadn’t been like this in his imagination. He’d save her, she’d be grateful, they’d run off to the edge of the property and apparate away. He’d be the hero for once instead of the villain. He hadn’t pictured her _hurt_. He hadn’t pictured her _scared_. “Can you run?”

“You’re saving me?” She sounded confused and worried. “They’ll _kill_ you.”

“Not if I’m not here.” He looked around her cell. “You like this place so much you plan to stay?”

She took another step toward him, and he frowned. She was so shaky. What had his aunt _done_ to her? Then she grabbed his hand. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll make it.”

** ~ day 10 ~ **

Her arm had been broken. 

She’d run to the edge of the property and let him apparate her with a broken arm.

She didn’t tell him until they were hidden in a cottage, in his cottage, a present from his mother for his sixteenth birthday. Warded. Fidelius charm. Unplottable. No one could find them, not even his mother. “Every boy needs a place to go and dream,” she’d said. He wondered, now, whether she’d given him a bolt hole on purpose.

“I’m worthless,” he said to Granger as he tried to heal her arm. “I’m rubbish at healing charms. I’m just going to make this worse.”

“Give me a few days to recover, and I’ll do it,” she said. “Then we can go and find the others.”

“Do you think they’ll take me?” he asked. “I let the - ”

“I’ll make them,” she said, laying the palm of one hand on his cheek. “I’ll make them, Draco.”


End file.
